Passivhaus, schools and CIBSE TM57
Juraj Mikurcik (@JurajMikurcik), an architect at Architype's rural studio asked via Twitter why Passivhaus was not featured in the new CIBSE publication TM57: Integrated school design. Committee chairman Prof Dejan Mumovic, Deputy Director of UCL Institute for Environmental Design and Engineering, explains the reasoning.
Discussions such as this, and the sharing of information, knowledge and experience, are vital to improving building performance in schools, and I would welcome any further feedback in the comments section of this blog.
Firstly, it should be stressed that the purpose of a CIBSE
Technical Memorandum (TM) is to provide guidance on good practice for use by
CIBSE members and others in the supply chain and by clients. A TM should
provide guidance that can be widely
applied using current technology.
There are impressive Passivhaus school projects –reflected
in the CIBSE Building Performance Award won by Architype in 2013 for Bushbury Hill Primary School
or articles in CIBSE Journal - but the numbers are limited
and so there is currently a limited pool of evidence and of skilled and
experienced people to deliver them. The view of the Committee for TM57 was that
it would be premature for CIBSE to include them in guidance intended for wide
use at this point. Of course this will be reviewed when future editions of the
publication are produced.
Secondly, TM57 is on
integrated school design, which presents a consensus on design hierarchy in
a wide range of performance characteristics (acoustics, lighting, indoor air
quality, thermal comfort and energy) which affect learning processes and the
students’ cognitive performance. Our feeling was that most 'passive house'
articles focus on energy performance, but we were keen not to focus on energy
targets at the expense of other environmental factors (such as indoor air
quality) and learning outcomes.
TM57 alone will not guarantee good school design. A
checklist of criteria does not constitute successful design. School designers
must also make the effort to study and share exemplar cases. TM57 provides both
a chapter on Methods for post occupancy evaluation in schools and a detailed
integrated case study; we should call for transparency of POE data which would
allow us to evaluate performance of buildings more holistically.
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